Interviewer Can Be Disarmingly Docile

David Frost poured the coffee. To his amazement, all of it went into the cups.

``Pouring two cups of coffee without spilling any in the saucers with my innate clumsiness is almost a Guinness record,`` he said with a drowsy smile of satisfaction.

``How do you take it?`` he asked. ``Anything else I can get you? This is just so lovely.``

He was at it again: being resolutely solicitous. Consummately cheerful. A breathing version of Emily Post`s rules of etiquette.

David Frost talks to lots of people -- the famous and the infamous -- molding conversation into a livelihood.

He has interviewed Golda Meir, Truman Capote, Richard Nixon, Orson Welles, the Shah of Iran, Billy Graham, Woody Allen, Yasser Arafat, Prince Charles, Tennessee Williams, Sirhan Sirhan, the Beatles and Idi Amin, and told them all how astoundingly marvelous it was to spend a little time chatting with them.

``The what-makes-people-tick factor is what interests me,`` he said in his sunny suite at the Waldorf Towers during a recent visit to New York from London.

``My father used to quote an old proverb to me, `Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.` Meaning everyone has something to teach us.``

The sandy-haired, gimlet-eyed, 51-year-old British TV interviewer was readying himself for his next round of eclectic chats.

Shortly, he was going to sit down for a conversation with George and Barbara Bush for the first installment of a new six-part interview series, Talking With David Frost, that will begin Wednesday at 8 p.m. on the Public Broadcasting Service.

This will be the fourth time Frost will have interviewed President Bush (no record here -- Frost conversed with Muhammad Ali seven times), and he intends to use the opportunity to have Bush rate his administration so far and to ruminate on what he forsees during the second half of his term.

Frost`s technique can be deceptive. His interviewing style seems so harmless, and often it can be infuriatingly docile.

His strongest talent is for being able to put someone so at ease they practically forget they`re awake. His is the manner that makes people melt.

To avoid any pretense of solemnity, Frost always spices his interviews with lines like: ``It`s such a joy to be doing this!`` Or, ``That`s a marvelous observation!`` Or, ``What a terrific answer!``

The New Republic once said a typical Frost program resembles ``a long warm bath.``

But sometimes the baths can get a bit too toasty. Frost has a knack for so disarming people that they admit things they later slap themselves for admitting.

During a Frost interview, for instance, Arthur Godfrey told the world he had been sterilized. Hugh Downs `fessed up to a hair transplant.

Cardinal John Carmel Heenan said that if Roman Catholic couples examined their consciences and still used contraceptives, then he would tell them, ``God bless you.`` During the famous post-White House interviews, Richard Nixon said that he had ``let down the country.``

Some critics, nonetheless, find Frost`s style too foppishly upbeat and servile. They regard him as more impresario than journalist. ``David Frost,`` Malcolm Muggeridge once said, ``represents modern mediocrity.``

Before he steps into a studio, Frost goes in for unremitting preparation. Teams of researchers comb though backgrounds of subjects and compile the results in binders for him to review.

His helpers will do anything. They read Alexander Haig`s master`s thesis. They grilled Jack Kemp`s football trainer. If they could have found him, they would have cornered George Bush`s childhood milkman.

``I love the preparation,`` Frost said. ``The only thing I didn`t enjoy was hand-carrying these enormous binders the other day off the plane. That 500-yard walk from the airport to Customs was not enjoyable. Apart from carrying the research, I love it.``

Frost continues to spring up in innumerable places. In England, he can be seen during one`s pancakes every Sunday morning on Frost on Sunday.

He is the host of a panel show, Through the Keyhole, in which someone snoops around a well-known person`s house and briefs the panel on its contents.

Then the members try to guess whose house it is; they get it right half the time. He had a concise stint as host of the syndicated Inside Edition in this country, begging out of his two-year contract after five weeks. (``It just wasn`t my scene.``)

He produces and packages TV shows like The Spectacular World of Guinness Records, and recently completed some videotaped interviews with top business executives.